Community History Workshop Series: Preserving Our Past

Presented in conjunction with The Center for Texas Studies at TCU, these workshops are aimed at increasing the historical awareness of the community. The series is designed to make the public aware of the important, yet often overlooked historical resources around them, and how to preserve them for posterity. The goal of the workshops is to prove that “every person is a historian,” and that they can, by their deeds and actions, preserve a small part of the cultural and historical fabric of this region.

In commemoration of Women’s History Month and 100 years of women’s suffrage, join us for an in-depth look at the movement with Dr. Rachel Gunter of Collin College. She will explore the route to ratification of the amendment in Texas in 1919 and national acceptance in 1920, though the story does not end there. Changes in women’s right to participate in primaries and elections impacted other groups before and after 1920 including immigrants, servicemen, WWI veterans, Mexican-Americans, and African-Americans. Moreover, the modifications to suffrage law affected the meaning of citizenship in America.

Rachel M. Gunter received her Ph.D. in history from Texas A&M University and is a Professor of History at Collin college. Dr. Gunter is a consultant, interviewee, editor, and co-writer for a documentary of the Texas Suffrage Movement from the Ruthe Winegarten Memorial Foundation coming in August 2020. She is the Texas Coordinator for the Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States and serves on the Executive Advisory Committee of the Handbook of Texas Women for the Texas State Historical Association. Her publications include “Without Us, It is Ferguson with a Plurality," "Woman Suffrage and Anti-Ferguson Politics” in Impeached: The Removal of Texas Governor James E. Ferguson (2017) published by Texas A&M University Press. She is active on Twitter @PhDRachel and her website is RMGunter.Owlstown.com.

The Center for Texas Studies at TCU is designed to celebrate all that makes Texas distinctive. It is housed in AddRan College of Liberal Arts, where various disciplines and programs can act in concert to foster and nurture the essence of Texas. History is, of course, central, but Texas literature, anthropology, ethnography, politics, religions, philosophy and design and textiles all represent elements that are a part of the incredible mosaic of Texas.